housekeepers for the matutinal bore of having to be punctual and unfailing at their offices.
The hours for the workwomen, I hope, would not exceed eight. No man or woman should be so overworked that he or she will not have time and strength every day for a little self-culture and social culture. If women, by means of co-operative housekeeping, should "go into business," as the phrase is, and begin making and saving money, I trust they may be preserved from that greed and fury of selfishness, that unholy eagerness to grasp more than a fair share of the comforts and luxuries of life, that in all ages have made men so willing to grind down their fellow-creatures into starvation of body and brutishness of mind, that they may reap the fruits of their prolonged and unrequited toil. Indeed, is not the typical American gentleman himself rather a melancholy object,—with his intense and unremitting devotion to dollars and cents, which leaves him no time for reading, drawing, or music, none for the love and study of out-door nature, none for communion with himself or with his fellows, so that every night he is tired to death with his day's work, and hates society because the faculties which properly come into play in company are in him wholly undeveloped? "Society!" In this country there is none. Boys and girls meet together, dance and flirt until they are married, and that is all there is of it.
Stock in Trade of the Co-operative Clothing-House.
The goods of the co-operative sewing-rooms must, of course, be bought at wholesale: and at first, while the capital is small, investment will be made only in the few standard kinds more or less of which every family uses,—such as shirtings, nainsooks, jaconets, linen and flannels for underclothing, and for dresses, black silks and black alpacas, white piqués and white alpacas, linsey woolsey, thibets, calicoes, lawns, and a few plaids for children. Numbered dress-linings should be kept ready cut and basted, so that when a customer buys a gown in the salesroom, she can go
